To Boldly Go
by Vampire-Badger
Summary: Area 51 is supposed to be where the government hides their aliens, not a boring office building where a group of misfits shuffle paperwork. But that's exactly what Desmond finds when he gets hired at the most boring summer job in existence. At least, that's how it seems on the surface.


Desmond fidgeted and tried not to look at his father's disapproving stare. This wasn't the first time he'd been here, sitting across on the other side of his dad's unnecessarily huge desk, and it probably wouldn't be the last. That didn't make it any easier though, and William knew just how long to make Desmond wait for maximum awkwardness.

"How many times are we going to do this?" he finally asked. His voice was judgmental in a way that really shouldn't have bothered Desmond but somehow still did. He felt like he was suddenly six years old again, instead of sixteen. "I'm waiting for an answer, Desmond," William snapped.

"Dunno," Desmond muttered, staring at the heavy nameplate in front of him- _General William Miles_. It was better than looking his dad in the eye, but not by much.

"This is the fifth school you've been kicked out of in the past two years," William snapped. "I'm running out of options here."

"I don't really care about your options, dad," Desmond said, and crossed his arms over his chest. "You keep putting me in military schools, I'm going to keep running away."

"I've noticed," William said.

"You could send me to public school," Desmond said. "Let me be normal for once."

But William only shook his head, and Desmond felt a familiar surge of frustration well up inside him at his dad's offhand dismissal of his opinion. "No," he said. "This is what we're going to do. It's the end of the school year anyway. I considered summer school, but there's probably no point in believing you wouldn't just run away from that too."

"Nope." Desmond scowled at the idea of summer school, because he had so many better things to do with his time than waste it sweating away in some classroom somewhere.

"So I worked something else out with a friend," William said. "You're getting a summer job."

"A military job?" Desmond asked, because his dad was a military man- a general, even- and Desmond didn't think he had any normal friends.

William smiled at that, and Desmond felt his stomach suddenly flip. That smile, more than anything else, convinced him that he was not about to like whatever he was about to hear. "See for yourself," he said, and pushed a single sheet of paper across the desk toward Desmond.

The page was a confidentiality agreement, filled with tight writing in a tiny font that Desmond didn't bother reading all the way through. He only got as far as the first paragraph before looking up at William in confusion. "Area 51?" he asks. "Like, with the aliens? That Area 51?"

"In a matter of speaking," William said. "The original Area 51 had nothing to do with extraterrestrials, of course, but these days we use Area 51 to deal with all the crackpots out there that claim they've been abducted, or that the balloon stuck in the tree in their backyard is actually a UFO."

"Why bother?" Desmond asked. "It's not like aliens are real."

"Of course not," William said. "But there's an endless supply of idiots out there that believe in them, and a lot of them are the noisy, melodramatic kind. Giving them an official place to complain to keeps them from making trouble in other ways."

"And… you want me to work here?" Desmond asked. "Talking to crazy people and investigating crop circles?"

"Of course not," William snapped. "I want you to stop getting kicked out of every school I send you to. But that doesn't seem like an option right now, so I'm hoping that one miserable summer is going to knock some sense into you."

"Doubt it," Desmond muttered. "Your schools all suck."

"What do you think you're going to do without a high school education?" William demanded. "What kind of job do you think you'll end up with?"

Desmond shrugged. "Bartender?"

His father sighed and tossed a pen in Desmond's general direction, who barely managed not to fumble the catch. "Sign the damn paper and get out of here. I have real work to do, and you have an early start tomorrow morning."

-/-

Desmond couldn't explain, even to himself, why he bothered to show up at Area 51 at nine the next morning. It was a stupid waste of time summer job, and he wasn't even sure he was going to get paid for doing it. Maybe it was curiosity, or maybe he was just getting tired of dealing with his mother's sad looks. Either way, he pulled up with five minutes to spare in front of a dirty brick building surrounded by cracked pavement. It was even uglier than a military boarding school, and Desmond had some experience in that area.

The parking lot was empty when Desmond pulled his motorcycle in, but another car followed him in almost immediately. The driver parked in the space next to Desmond, then went to his trunk and pulled out a heavy looking cardboard box. He hefted it without apparent effort, which was very impressive given that he only had one arm. "Are you Miles's kid?" the man asked, without looking up from his box.

"Yea. Desmond." He just barely managed not to stare at the missing arm.

"Great," the man said, still not looking at him. "Grab that box and follow me."

There was another box in the trunk, and it was just as heavy as the first box looked. Desmond had to stop and readjust his grip more than once on his way to the building's front door. "What's in this?" he asked.

"Records," the man said. "Some crazy up in Wisconsin has been documenting every claim of abduction he could find in the past five years. He up and died last month, and his grandkids found his records in the basement. They gave it to the local police, local police sent it on to us."

"Oh." The man led the way into the building, through a dusty entryway, and into a large storage room packed all the way to the ceiling with boxes and loose documents. "So what do we do with it?"

"Go though it to make sure there's nothing important there," the man said. "Then file it all away and wait for the next crazy. Now-" he put his box down on a clear patch of floor and Desmond stacked his on top. "What have you heard about what we do here?"

"That it's pretty much a giant waste of time," Desmond said. He expected the man to be angry- he had a special skill at getting people mad at him- but to his surprise the man only laughed.

"That pretty much covers it," he said. "This is where the military sends everyone it doesn't want to deal with and can't afford to get rid of."

"How many people work here?" Desmond asked. He put aside the question of what exactly a person had to do to be exiled here for later.

"Three. Four, with you. Myself, Connor, and Leo." He stuck out a hand, and Desmond shook it awkwardly. "My name's Malik."

Before he can say anything else, the front door opened and slammed shut again. A man who looks like he has some Native American blood somewhere in his ancestry stuck his head around the door to the storage room. He looked about five or six years older than Desmond, but he at least ten years younger than Malik. "Did you give anyone my cell number recently?" he asked.

"I don't think I even know your number," Malik said bluntly. "Why?"

"That guy that kept calling the office yesterday called me at home last night."

Malik shrugged. "Ask Leo when he gets in," he said, and waved a hand vaguely between him and Desmond. "Desmond, this is Connor. Connor, Desmond."

"Hey," Desmond said, but Connor only grunted before disappearing down the hall.

"Good first lesson," Malik said. He swung back around to face Desmond. "Never give out your contact information, because people _will _use it to track you down, and these are not the kind of loonies you want following you around in your spare time."

Desmond nodded, already wondering if he could maybe let his dad's phone number slip out at some point. Set some crazy conspiracy theorist on him.

"Here," Malik said, and picked up an armful of loose papers. "All these need to be catalogued and put into the digital database. The program's a little… temperamental. Leo wrote the code but never got around to working all the bugs out. It works fine, as long as you know how to deal with the quirks."

"Great," Desmond muttered. "Anything else?"

Malik shrugged. "Just answer the phone if it rings and no one else is around. You don't have to say anything special, just agree with whatever they tell you and try not to make them any crazier."

"And don't talk to anyone called Hastings," Connor added as he walked past the storage room with a box of his own. Desmond nodded and assumed that was the guy bothering Connor at home.

"Computer's over there," Malik said, and pointed at an ancient machine in the back of the storage room. "Get started."

-/-

By the end of his first week, Desmond had started to get a loose idea of what his new job was really like. Mostly, it was simple. Skim through files and reports, enter the important details on the computer, occasionally answer the phone and pretend to listen while someone on the other end rambled in great detail about anal probing.

Much more difficult were his three coworkers. Malik was clearly the one in charge, although as far as Desmond could tell he didn't hold any official position of authority. He was just the one that had been there the longest, and the one the others listened to the most. He was constantly short tempered and seemed to communicate largely through sarcasm, but Desmond was starting to get the idea that none of it was really bad tempered. Well, most of it wasn't. Probably.

Connor was taciturn and largely silent (also just plain large- at least six feet, probably more). Desmond usually went out of his way to avoid him. On the other hand, whenever someone called and started to really freak Desmond out, Connor was the one that took over the call and scared them off.

The third member of the team- Leo- tended to show up around noon and leave long after the others. He shouldn't really fit in- he was cheerful and talked nonstop, and as far as Desmond could tell, actually believed in aliens- but it was almost impossible not to like the man. He didn't help much with the workload, preferring to spend his time messing around with different ways to contact aliens in what Malik refers to as his lab- also known as the building's basement.

Desmond didn't know go in the basement. But then again, he didn't go higher than the ground floor, either. There was no point, and Malik had warned him against trusting the stairs on his first day there. "They fall apart," he'd told Desmond during his lunch break. "Just stay down here." Desmond had nodded and not given the upper floors a second thought.

It was a boring, weird, aggravating job, and Desmond had never been so happy to see a Friday afternoon. He spent the day being antsy and easily distracted, with the result that he didn't finish his pile of papers until almost six. Malik and Connor were already gone, and Leo still in the basement when Desmond finally packed up his bag and left for the day.

Except there was someone waiting next to Desmond's motorcycle when he got to the parking lot.

"So," the man called as Desmond came close. His voice was British and arrogant and extremely annoying. "You're the new guy, yes?"

"Yes," Desmond said cautiously. "And who are you?"

"Shaun," the man said. "Shaun Hastings. And I wanted to talk to you about-"

"Oh," Desmond interrupted. "Hastings. They warned me about you. On my first day."

"Really?" Shaun looked startled for a second, then oddly pleased. "What did they say?"

"That you're creepy and call people at home when they don't want you to," Desmond said.

"That's one way to look at it," Shaun said.

"What's another way?"

"That I'm much more intelligent than any of the people here," Shaun answered. "And I've been abducted by aliens."

Desmond laughed at that. "No you haven't," he said, and watched Shaun glare at him. Instead of looking more menacing, the expression just made him look pissed off. And younger- he was probably around Connor's age, maybe a year or two younger. Probably still in college.

"How can you possibly know that?" Shaun asked. "I haven't even said anything."

"Because aliens aren't real," Desmond said. "Now it's Friday afternoon, I've had a long week at a shitty job, and I just want to go home."

"This is Area 51!" Shaun protests. "How can you not believe in aliens?"

"Probably because they're not real," Desmond said. Shaun doesn't move from his place between Desmond and his bike, and Desmond wasn't quite mad enough to physically push him out of the way.

"But that's- that's crazy," Shaun protested.

"Says the guy who thinks aliens are real," Desmond said, and watched Shaun's face go suddenly stubborn. He sighed. "If I leave now, are you just going to keep bothering me?"

"I will probably follow you home," Shaun said, without even blinking. "Or you can get rid of me tonight."

"How?"

"I know where the aliens are landing tonight," Shaun said, and there was a real spark of excitement in his voice and on his face. "Come see for yourself, and if you're not convinced, I will never talk to you again."

Desmond considered this for all of thirty seconds before nodding. Maybe Shaun was a crazy, alien hunting stalker guy. But he was still probably better company than Desmond's dad. "Fine," he said. "Take me to see the aliens."

"What, really?" Shaun asked.

"Yea."

"Okay, I- wow. I just never really expected to convince anyone."

"Well all you've convinced me of is that you might be better company than my dad," Desmond said.

"Good enough," Shaun said. "Do you mind if I hitch a ride with you? My girlfriend has my car."

"Your girlfriend has _your_ car, or your girlfriend has _her_ car that she sometimes lets you borrow?" Desmond asked. Shaun's blush was answer enough, and also sort of funny because it clashed horribly with his bright red hair. "Yea, fine," he muttered. "Just- don't make this any weirder than it has to be, alright?"

"Of course not," Shaun said.

Five minutes later, Desmond was riding down the highway with a man he'd just met. Shaun had his arms wrapped around Desmond's middle in a death grip, and his head rested on Desmond's shoulder so his shouted instructions could be heard over the motor and the wind.

"How far away are we going?" Desmond called.

"It's only half an hour out," Shaun yelled back.

"Only?" Desmond muttered, and hit the gas. Speed limits be damned, he wanted nothing more than to be off the bike and untangled from Shaun. Even aliens were starting to look promising.

They got there in considerably less than half an hour, but the empty field Shaun had led him too turned out to be cold, dark, and extremely empty. "There's nothing here," Desmond said.

"Of course not," Shaun scoffed. "They never land before midnight."

"Great." Desmond pulled his hoodie out of his backpack and over his head. It helped a little with the cold. "So we still have like five hours."

"Yep," Shaun said. "Plenty of time to get aquainte-"

"I'm taking a nap," Desmond announced. He'd slept in worse places than a field. "Wake me up when the visitors come." And without another word, he pulled up his hood and curled up on the grass with his back to Shaun. Within five minutes, he was totally asleep.

Asleep and _dreaming_-

_In his dream, he felt weirdly calm, way calmer than he should have been. And he didn't really feel asleep, either. He felt awake but really out of it, like the time he had to get his wisdom teeth pulled and had a weird reaction to the anesthesia. But he was obviously dreaming, because the place he was in could never exist in the real world. The empty field where he'd fallen asleep was gone, replaced by a white room filled with tools Desmond didn't recognize. He couldn't force himself to worry about it though, and for some reason the whole situation struck him as funny (maybe he was on drugs? Or anesthesia again). He laughed- giggled, really- and watched a round door across the room slide open with a whoosh._

_"Whoosh," he said aloud, and giggled again._

_Everything was kind of a blur after that- weird, inhuman figures moved around him, some with too many limbs, others colored blue or green or purple. A six inch tall something with four eyes and six arms studied Desmond's face in detail for what felt like nearly an hour. It should really have been worrying, but everything was still really funny for some reason, and Desmond just didn't care._

_Then one of the- people?- stepped right into Desmond's line of sight. He looked very, very close to human, and at a distance he could almost have been mistaken for one. But his eyes glowed bright and golden, and that definitely wasn't human._

_"Sleep," he said. The word was heavily accented but recognizably English._

_"Wha-"_

_The man pressed a hand- a hand with four fingers instead of five- over Desmond's face, gently closing his eyes. And sleep came crashing over him like a tidal wave-_

He woke, face down on the ground, his nose full of the smell of grass.

"So now you believe me, right?"

"What?" Desmond tried to sit up and suddenly his head felt like someone was pounding on the inside of his head with a hammer. "Shit."

"About the aliens," the voice pressed, and Desmond gets his brain together enough to recognize Shaun. "Look." And Desmond didn't have the strength to resist as Shaun grabs his arm and forced it up in front of Desmond's face. "They tagged you."

"I got a tattoo?" Desmond muttered. He can't really focus, but there was ink running all the way up to the elbow of his left arm. "My dad's gonna kill me."

"It's not a tattoo," Shaun insisted. "It's so the aliens can track you."

"Like I can tell my dad that," Desmond said. "He's still gonna kill me."

"That's what you're worried about right now?" Shaun demanded. "Seriously? You just got probed by aliens and you're worried about your dad?"

"You've clearly never met my dad," Desmond said. "He's a lot worse than-" And then it hits him. "I just got probed by aliens."

"Yea," Shaun said, and leaned over to help Desmond to his feet. "It takes some getting used to. It took me three abductions before it stopped bothering me. But it's really not that big of a deal-"

"Hang on," Desmond interrupted. It was still a challenge to think through the pounding in his head, but he made the effort. "You've been abducted three times?"

"Way more than that, actually," Shaun corrected.

"How many times?"

"Maybe twenty?" He shrugged. "Twenty five? I don't know, I kind of lost track."

"So… do the aliens just have some kind of weird thing for you, or are you just really unlucky?" Desmond asked.

"Neither," Shaun said. "I get abducted on purpose."

"You are insane," Desmond moaned, but Shaun only grinned in answer.

-/-

He didn't bother going home that day. His dad probably wouldn't even notice, and he still didn't have a good explanation for the tattoo. Tracker. Whatever it was. So instead, he followed Shaun back to his apartment, hoping there would be some kind of answers waiting there.

Instead, he found something that looked like every serial killer lair he'd ever seen on TV, complete with a map of the state marked with thumb tacks and string. "What do you do for a living, Shaun?" Desmond asked.

"Research assistant," Shaun said. "History. Why?"

"Just wondering," Desmond said, and pointed to the other side of the room. "Are the computers yours, too?"

"Rebecca's," Shaun said vaguely, and Desmond decided Rebecca was probably the girlfriend.

"Alright," Desmond said. "So tell me why anyone would choose to be abducted by aliens twenty five times."

Shaun gave him a look that heavily implied Desmond was a moron for not being able to figure it out himself. "Because they're aliens," he said. "Real, actual aliens, with their own history and culture. I don't know why I'm the only one excited by this."

"Probably because they're all convinced you're making things up," Desmond said. "Does your girlfriend believe in aliens?"

"Oh yea," Shaun said. "Our first official date, I took her to be abducted."

"And you're still together?" Desmond asked, after a very long pause.

"Oh, yea," Shaun said. "It was romantic."

The apartment door opened at that moment, and a short woman around Shaun's age- probably the girlfriend, Rebecca- came in, arms full of groceries. She waved distractedly to Shaun and Desmond on her way into the apartment's tiny kitchen. "Did you actually make a friend, Shaun?" she asked.

"I've made friends before!" Shaun protested.

"Yea, right," Rebecca said. "You've been in America for almost two years and I haven't met a single one of your friends."

Shaun grumbled at this but said nothing.

Rebecca turned back to Desmond. "I'm Rebecca, by the way," she said.

"Desmond," said Desmond. "Your boyfriend got me abducted by aliens."

"Yea," Rebecca sighed. "He does that."

"So why was it so important for you to prove these abductions were really happening?" Desmond asked. "Because if this was all just some dumb pride thing, I'm going to be kind of mad."

"What?" Shaun shook his head, suddenly frowning. "Sorry, no. I should have mentioned it way earlier." He gestured vaguely at the table that took up most of the kitchen's floor space. "It's kind of a long story though, we might as well sit down."

Desmond settled himself onto one of the mismatching chairs, which wobbled slightly under his weight. Shaun sat across from him while Rebecca clattered around the kitchen putting away her groceries. "Alright," Shaun said. "So I got abducted the first time the year I started at university. I almost flunked out trying to track the aliens down a second time, but eventually I managed it." His tone turned slightly smug. "I'm good at recognizing patterns."

"Not so much at modesty," Rebecca said from somewhere behind Desmond.

"So I tracked the conditions that matched up with alien appearances," Shaun continued. "And realized a lot of them- I mean, over ninety percent- were focused in this area. So I finished school, packed my bags, and moved here."

"Met me," Rebecca added. "Moved into my apartment, refused to leave-"

"And started meeting with aliens," Shaun finished. "I figured out how to predict their appearances, and made sure I was there every time they came around. At first it was- well, you were there today. You know what it's like. But I guess I got used to whatever they use to keep their abductees from making a fuss, and lately we've been talking."

"Really?" Desmond asked, and he couldn't hide the actual interest he felt at that. "Aliens speak English?"

"They have very good translation software," Shaun said. "And they learn quickly."

"What do they say?"

Shaun's face abruptly turned serious. "That they're looking for something," he said. "Well- someone."

"They're looking for a human?" Desmond said. "They're that interested in one of us?"

"One of them, actually," Rebecca corrected.

"You talk to them, too?" Desmond asked as she sat down next to Shaun.

"Sometimes," said Rebecca. "Not as often as Shaun."

"Do you want the story or not?" Shaun said. He waited just long enough to be sure there would be no more interruptions. "Alright. So, ten years ago, this particular ship came to Earth to study us. Language, history, culture, biology, all that. It was a pretty routine job- the federation sends a ship out to every planet that looks like it's getting close to interplanetary travel."

"Federation?" Desmond asked, before he could stop himself.

"Oh yea," Shaun said. "There's something like fifty separate species spread across the galaxy, all subject to a single unified government-"

"Do not get him started," Rebecca said. "He will talk for hours."

"Hey!"

"Stay on topic then," Rebecca said.

"But he did ask-"

Rebecca didn't give him a chance to finish. "Alright," she said. "So basically, this should have been a routine trip. Observation only. Except something went wrong. The ship had a crew of about a hundred-"

"A hundred?" Desmond repeated. "How big is this ship?"

"Huge," said Shaun. "It's camouflaged."

"And more importantly," Rebecca added, "Captained by two aliens, which is normal in these cases. But this time, the two of them had a falling out."

"A fight," Shaun corrected. "Somebody died, I think, and one of the captains took off and has been living as a human ever since. Only no one knows where or why. That's why I've been trying to get someone from Area 51 to listen- I figured if anyone would be able to find an alien pretending to be a human, it would be the people that actually study aliens."

"Then you're way overestimating us," Desmond muttered. "So… aliens look like humans."

"Some of them," Shaun said. "It's a very common evolutionary path. No one would even notice the AWOL alien. They're pretty much identical to us, except for the-" he waved one hand in Desmond's direction- "four fingers thing."

"Four fingers," Desmond muttered, and suddenly he remembered part of what he'd seen on the alien ship the night before. "And glowing eyes?"

"So you met the other captain," Shaun said. "Altair."

"Weird name."

"He's an alien," Shaun said. "What did you expect? Anyway, it's technically not his real name. 'Altair' is just as close as we can get with a human voice box."

"And his partner's name?" Desmond asked.

"Even less pronounceable than Altair's," Shaun said.

"What's he look like?"

"Human-ish, with four fingers," Shaun said. "And yes, I know that's totally useless, but aliens don't emphasize the same physical traits as we do, so the description we got was no help."

"So what do you expect me to do?" Desmond asked.

"You work at Area 51," Shaun said. "Don't you guys deal with alien stuff all the time?"

"Never," Desmond said. "We mostly deal with prank calls and crazies."

"Great." Shaun slumped over in his seat. "So that's a solid month's effort wasted. You seriously don't work with real aliens?"

"Most of us don't even believe in them," Desmond said. "Except probably Leo. And I guess me, now." He frowned, staring at the fresh ink on his forearm. Then he glanced over at the other two. Identical markings- to track them, apparently. "But maybe it's time to start doing some things differently."

-/-

"What's that?"

"What's what?" Desmond asked, trying to keep his voice calm and his arm out of sight as his dad reaches across the breakfast table.

"On your arm," William said.

"Nothing."

"Nothing?" William sighed. "Really, Desmond?"

And since his tone and his expression clearly indicated that he wouldn't let it drop, Desmond sighed and turned his arm to make it more visible.

"You got a tattoo," William said.

"I know," Desmond said, because it seemed like a better option than saying 'no, actually, it's an alien tracking device'.

William sighed and stood up. "Fine," he said. "At least it's not some girl's name."

"You're okay with this?" Desmond asked. "Seriously?"

"I'm absolutely not fine with you permanently marking up your skin with some… tribal design thing," William said. "But since you went and did it already, I guess my opinion doesn't matter. Just- wear long sleeves or something if you're going somewhere important."

"Alright," Desmond said, and watched as his dad left the room. He honestly hadn't expected that to go so easily. It put him in a surprisingly good mood as he finished his own breakfast and left for work. He briefly considered putting on something with sleeves to make his dad happy, but it was almost eighty degrees, and he'd already figured out that the air conditioning in the Area 51 building was spotty at best. So he just left, still wearing the T-shirt he'd come down to breakfast in.

His good mood lasted about as long as it took him to drive into work, getting there about fifteen minutes before nine. Malik was the only one there when Desmond showed up- Connor always got to work exactly at nine, and Leo wasn't one of those guys with a really solid grip on time.

He grunted at Desmond as he walked in, barely glancing up at him. It was no different from his usual halfhearted greeting, so Desmond just waved in response and headed right into the storage room with the files. His mind had already gone back to the problem of the missing alien when he suddenly heard loud, hurried footsteps behind him. Then suddenly, Malik grabbed his arm with so much force that he stopped Desmond dead in his tracks.

"What on Earth did you do to yourself?" he demanded.

"It's just a tattoo," Desmond said. He tried yanking his arm back, but Malik's fingers were wrapped around his wrist in a too tight death grip. "Why do you care?"

"It's unprofessional," Malik said.

"Seriously?" Desmond asked. "Professionalism at this place? Come on, we hunt aliens."

Helpfully enough, Connor came in at that exact moment to walk past carrying what looked like a homemade model of a flying saucer, painted bright pink. He shot them both a don't-even-ask look before vanishing into the storage room.

"Alright," Malik admitted. "So it doesn't really matter here, but someday, when you want a real job, you're going to really regret that thing on your arm." He sounded genuinely angry, like for some reason Desmond had offended him on a personal level. There was fire in his eyes and venom in his words, and Desmond suddenly found himself really wishing Malik would just let go.

"I didn't-"

"Do you have any idea what you've done?" Malik said. Shouted, really. "Do you think there are no consequences?"

"Malik-" Desmond swallowed hard against the fear suddenly rising up in his throat. It was a struggle to keep his voice from shaking, but somehow he managed it. "Please let go. You're hurting me."

It took a second for the words to get through to him, but eventually Malik made a noise that somehow managed to sound like both a hiss and a growl at the same time, and dropped Desmond's arm. He didn't look at Desmond at all, or anywhere in his general direction, before storming to the second floor of the building.

Desmond watched him go, torn between wondering why he would even go up there, and just being glad he was gone. He ended up staring, sort of slack jawed, at the stairs, cradling his left arm in his uninjured right.

"What happened?" Connor asked, and Desmond jumped slightly- he hadn't heard him come in.

"I have no idea," Desmond said. "He just got pissed about my tattoo."

Connor frowned. It wasn't an out of the ordinary expression on his face, but there was a deeper kind of worry than usual there. "That doesn't seem like Malik. He doesn't usually overreact to things."

"Maybe he just doesn't like tattoos," Desmond said.

Connor shook his head. "Leo has some old boyfriend's name on his shoulder," he said. "Apparently alcohol was involved."

"And Malik-"

"Didn't care at all," Connor said. "He just said something about bad life decisions. Didn't even rub it in when they broke up."

"Huh," Desmond said. He and Connor both look down at his arm, where bright red finger marks stood out sharply against the ink there. "Well that's really weird. Um- do you mind covering for me if I spend the rest of the day hiding in the storage room?"

Connor nodded, so Desmond muttered a quick thanks and nearly runs for the relative safety of the storage room. His mind was racing, because if Malik wasn't upset over the general concept of tattoos, there had to be something about Desmond's in particular that made him angry enough to leave marks on Desmond's arm. He'd been even more upset than Desmond's dad- his unbelievably, annoyingly judgmental dad- had been when he found out.

The only explanation Desmond could come up with was that Malik knew what it really was, but for some reason didn't want to come right out and say it. Which was weird- the man's entire job revolved around aliens, and being able to identify their markings should have been something he bragged about. It should never have been a secret.

For the first time, Desmond found himself wondering how people ended up at Area 51. He'd already pretty much figured out that they were a weird group of misfits and outcasts, but the world was full of misfits and outcasts. Not all of them ended up here.

He couldn't ask Malik. Definitely not today, and probably not anytime soon. Connor had seemed genuinely confused about the whole thing, so he probably didn't know anything he hadn't already said. That just left Leo.

The man came in sometime after lunch, later than usual but not a lot later, and Desmond waited another half hour after that just to make sure Malik wasn't going to come down from whatever he was doing upstairs. When the building stayed reassuringly quiet, Desmond slipped out of his own sanctuary and down the stairs to Leo's.

It was the first time he'd come down there, and Desmond stopped dead in his tracks at the bottom of the stairs, not quite sure what to make of the room. It was large- as big or bigger as the whole of the first floor, although one whole corner was taken up with an ancient looking plumbing set. It gurgled loudly, and Desmond couldn't help thinking it sounded like some hungry monster.

The rest of the room was a lot less dark, though. And a lot more crowded- even after a full minute of confused staring, Desmond still couldn't figure out what any of the half-finished inventions that filled the room were for. Or why there was so much art lying around.

"Desmond!" Leo called from the far side of the room, near a desk with absolutely no empty space. "What are you doing down here?"

"I had some questions," Desmond said. He pointed at the nearest unidentifiable machine. "Do you really get paid for this?"

"Oh yes," Leo said brightly. "I find that it doesn't really matter what I do as long as no one understands what exactly it is that I'm doing."

"That's cool," Desmond said. And, looking around at the chaos around him, he could kind of guess how Leo had come to work at Area 51- there was probably nowhere else on Earth where he could get paid to do all this.

"I think so," Leo agreed. "What were your questions?"

"I was wondering if you knew how everyone else got here," Desmond said. "Specifically Malik."

"Hmm," Leo said, and gave Desmond a searching look. "Connor told me you fought with Malik."

"Yea," Desmond muttered.

"Well, I know Connor's here because he's still trying to pay for college," Leo said. "And this is the kind of job you get when you're dad's someone important in the military who wants to pretend you don't exist."

"Tell me about it," Desmond muttered.

"But Malik…" Leo tilted his head slightly sideways, considering. "He's been here longer than I have. He doesn't talk about how he got here."

"Oh," Desmond said. "Well- thanks for the help, anyway." He half turned to leave, but at the last second Leo called him back.

"I do know that he believes in aliens," he said.

"Seriously?" Desmond frowned. "I thought you were the only one that did."

But Leo shook his head. "He pretends not to, but every once and a while he'll slip up and say something."

"Like what?" Desmond asked.

"Just little things," Leo said. "But I think he might have been abducted before he came to work here."

"Oh," Desmond said, and then, "Oh!" again, but with a little more excitement. That would at least explain how Malik recognized the tracker on his arm. It could even explain why he had been so angry. "Thanks, Leo," he called, already halfway up the stairs. "You've been a big help."

-/-

There was someone waiting for Desmond when he left work that day, for the second time in a row. It was only half past two, but Desmond is fed up with aliens and area 51 and shitty coworkers for the day, and more than ready to just leave.

Except there was someone standing next to his motorcycle, keeping him from leaving. Or some_thing_, maybe, because Desmond recognized it. Him. The same alien that had been there Friday night on the ship, the one with the glowing eyes and four fingers.

Desmond took a hasty step backward as those eyes turned toward him, and went down flat on his butt when a curb got in the way. For a second he didn't know what to do, just stared up at the alien from where he was sprawled across the pavement, breathing too hard.

Then the alien blinked, and the glow in his eyes vanished abruptly. Suddenly, he looked more human than alien, and for the first time Desmond was able to really understand how an alien could hide in plain sight among normal humans.

"Are you afraid?"

"No," Desmond muttered, and the alien had the decency to ignore the obvious lie. Or maybe he just didn't care. "I just- wasn't expecting to run into you here." For some reason, it hadn't even occurred to him that any of the aliens might want to leave their ship and go wandering around.

The alien offered him a hand up, and Desmond found himself just staring at it. Four fingers, like Shaun had said. He stared long enough for it to get awkward, then remembered to reach out and take it. "Thanks," he said, as the alien pulled him to his feet. "You're- Altair, right?"

"Close enough," he said, and although the words were in English, his accent was like nothing Desmond had ever heard before. "I don't know your name."

"Desmond," Desmond said. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to speak with you," Altair said. "Shaun had mentioned that you study aliens."

"That's one way of putting it," Desmond said, and made a mental note to find out what exactly Shaun had said about him. "We're pretty useless, actually."

Altair sighed. "Ten years ago," he said, "I made a mistake that crippled my copilot and killed his brother. He was angry. We fought, and he left. I've been trying to find him ever since."

"Did you ever think he might not want to be come back?" Desmond asked.

"Then he can tell me himself," Altair said. "But to do that, I need to find him."

"And you think we can help you do that?" Desmond asked. Clearly, Altair had no idea what really happened at Area 51. "Because I'm not so sure."

"Well I'm running out of options," Altair said. "We should have left Earth months ago, but I've been putting it off, hoping I'll find him. In a few weeks, I won't be able to keep making excuses. We will have to leave him here."

"I'll keep an eye out, I guess," Desmond said. "If I find anything out-"

"I will know where to find you," Altair said. His eyes dropped for just a second to Desmond's arm, before he nodded and walked off without so much as a goodbye. Desmond stared after him for a solid five minutes, until finally footsteps behind him jolted him out of his reverie.

"Something wrong?" Connor asked , and Desmond shook his head. He wasn't in the mood to explain what had just happened, even if he didn't think it would make him sound crazy.

"I was just about to leave," he said instead. "See you tomorrow."

But he couldn't stop thinking about aliens and Altair and his missing copilot, not even after he got home. He barely said a word to his dad all evening, and locked himself in his room right after dinner. At midnight, he found himself staring absently at the tracker on his arm, wondering how he had gotten mixed up in all this and what he was supposed to do about it.

He would have been happy to help Altair. If he could have. If he had any idea where to look for a missing alien. But the truth was, he was probably the worst person on Earth to get involved.

Something kept nagging at him though, and Desmond couldn't seem to stop turning the problem over in his mind. He felt like he already had the answer, somehow, and if he could just look at it the right way, everything would work out. "Aliens," he muttered, the words half a curse and half a complaint. Why did they think they have a right to come into his life, to make everything complicated, to tattoo his arm-

And that was she he saw it. Not the tattoo, but the finger marks Malik had left when he grabbed him earlier. Four angry red lines in sharp contrast to the black ink below them. Three fingers and a thumb. Four fingers. Not five, like he should have had.

For a minute, Desmond just say there, barely daring to breathe, working it all over in his mind. Crippled, Altair had said. Malik had only one arm. He'd been at Area 51 longer than anyone else, and no one knew why he had started there. But aliens would be interested in humanity's efforts to find them, wouldn't they? And Malik had recognized the tattoo on Desmond's arm- not because he'd been abducted, like Desmond had guessed, but because he was _one of them. _

"Shit," Desmond said, with feeling, and thirty seconds later he was on his motorcycle, racing toward the highway. He broke every speed limit between home and Area 51, and only sheer dumb luck kept him from wiping out.

-/-

There was one car in the parking lot when Desmond got there, which didn't surprise him. Normally he would have been, but he'd run out of surprise a while ago. Desmond tried not to run for the door, but he was panting anyway when he got inside. Or hyperventilating, maybe. He'd never had to confront a coworker about secretly being an alien, after all.

Malik looked up from whatever he was doing when Desmond came in, surprise all over his face. Then he sighed and stood up, crossing the room to stand only a foot or two away from Desmond. They studied each other in almost total silence for a few minutes, until Desmond managed to get some control over his breathing.

"Are you done?" Malik asked.

"Done- what?"

"Panicking," Malik snapped. "I would much rather not have this conversation if you can't control yourself."

"I'm fine," Desmond insisted, even though he wasn't really sure that he was.

"Good," said Malik. Then his voice lost some of its sharp edge, and his shoulders slumped slightly. "How did you figure it out?"

Desmond didn't answer, just held up his arm and pointed to the fingermarks there.

"Ah." Malik nodded. "That was a stupid mistake. And-" he hesitated, before going on in a tone that sounded almost apologetic. "I shouldn't have overreacted."

"It doesn't hurt that much," Desmond muttered. "But what happens now?"

"Nothing," Malik said. "Unless you're planning to say something to someone."

"None of my business," Desmond said. "But…"

"But what?"

"I talked to Altair today," Desmond said.

For a second, Malik looked confused, then he let out a bark of surprised laughter, and says something that sort of sounded like 'Altair', but not really at all. Desmond remembered what Shaun and Rebecca had said about alien names being unpronounceable by humans, and couldn't help shivering a little. Sounds like that weren't supposed to come out of a human mouth, not ever. "What did he say?" Malik asked.

"That he wants to see you," Desmond said, and Malik's eyes flashed golden for a second.

"I don't want to see him," he said.

"That's what I told him," Desmond said quickly, because Malik was still glaring daggers at him. "But…"

"Again with the 'but's," Malik groaned.

"But he's been looking for you for over ten years," Desmond said. "Maybe he deserves to hear it straight from you."

Malik's face went through several interesting shades of anger before shifting abruptly to thoughtful. "I'll consider it," he said at last, and Desmond nodded. It was more than he had expected, actually. Malik waved a hand dismissively, his eyes suddenly distant. "Go home, Desmond," he said. "It's late."

"Are you sure-"

"I'll see you tomorrow," Malik said.

So Desmond turned and left. He went home, and completely failed to get any sleep at all. The next morning he showed up for work at 9:00, like usual, and did his job the same way he had since his first day there. He ran into Malik a couple of times, but every time he tried to bring up their conversation of the night before, Connor or Leo would come by and ruin the conversation.

Wednesday went the same way, and so did Thursday. Friday morning, Desmond decided that no matter what, he was going to have to talk to Malik, because he wasn't going to wait an entire weekend to find out what had happened.

But something was different. Usually, everyone worked separately, interacting only in passing or occasionally during lunch. But today, Connor and Leo were waiting in the main room when Desmond came in. "What's going on?" he asked.

Connor shrugged. "Malik just said to make sure and be here on time," he said. "Something big, I guess."

"He didn't tell me," Desmond said.

"Probably because you're usually on time," Connor said, and at that exact moment, Malik came in. With Altair. Desmond made a little choking noise of surprise that luckily went unnoticed as the other two sized up Altair.

"Who's this?" Connor asked.

"Boyfriend?" Leo suggested, and Malik made the same surprised noise as Desmond. Altair only smiled.

"No," Malik said. "No- this is Altair. He's an alien."

Leo jumped off the table he'd been sitting on, face suddenly alight with excited curiosity. Before he could get a single question out, though, Connor snorted. "Really?" he asked. "We're supposed to believe that's a real alien? That just happens to look exactly like a human?"

Malik glanced sideways at Desmond, and he realized that was probably his cue. "It's true," he said. "I saw him last weekend when I got- ah-" it still sounded stupid when he said it out loud. "Abducted."

Connor glanced between Desmond, Malik, and Altair, then nodded slowly. He didn't quite look ready to believe, but he looked ready to listen.

"And as it turns out that aliens are actually real and here on Earth, what we do here has to change."

"To what?" Leo asked.

"Go-betweens," Altair said. "At some point, humans are going to develop interplanetary travel, and when that happens, you'll need someone that sort of knows what's going on."

"And that's supposed to be us?" Connor asked, looking around at his coworkers. Desmond half smiled, because he could easily imagine what was going through Connor's mind- that Malik was a sarcastic antisocial with no friends, that Leo was an easily distracted dreamer, that Desmond was a teenager who'd been kicked out of five schools, and that he himself was a recent college graduate with more loans than he knew what to do with.

"Yes," Malik said.

"Huh," Connor said, and nodded. "Well, it beats filing paperwork eight hours a day."

After that, there were no more arguments, just questions and plans and an atmosphere of excitement that seemed almost contagious. _We're actually going to do this, _Desmond realizes at one point. Aliens and spaceships and travels to other planets. The kind of stuff that shouldn't be possible outside of science fiction. He almost laughed out loud, then, remembering that his dad had forced him into this job to teach him responsibility, and for real world experience, and he didn't even knew what else. Instead, he'd been pulled into an interplanetary drama of missing persons and alien ambassadors.

Later, while Leo cornered Altair to ask him a million questions, Connor watching and listening from a few feet away, Desmond pulled Malik to one side of the room, out of earshot of the others.

"So?" He asked. "What really happened?"

"I took your advice," Malik said. "I went to talk to him myself."

"Oh," Desmond said. "Good. And?"

"There are a lot of things we need to work through," Malik said quietly. "I'm not ready to go home yet, and I may not ever be. This-" and he waved his hand at the room in general. "Seemed like a good compromise. Earth stays in contact with the federation, without staying _too_ much in contact." Then he smiled, the first genuine smile Desmond had ever seen on his face. "This hasn't ever happened before, you know," he said. "Substantive contact between the federations and a planetbound species. It's going to be very interesting to see how this ends up working."

"So basically we're going to boldly go where no man-"

"If this is going to work," Malik interrupted loudly, "That is the last Star Trek quote I have to hear in this office."

"Right," Desmond said. Then, when Malik turned toward the other three, he continued under his breath- "has gone before." Malik scowled over his shoulder at him, and Desmond gave him an innocent smile. This job was starting to look like it would be a lot more fun than it had at the beginning.


End file.
